Making Changes In Your Shop Based On Your Clients' Shopping Habits

| Monday, April 9, 2012
By Stanley Sunbeam


Your customers hold the keys to improving the success of your retail business. If you wish to boost your product sales, they can let you know how; if you wish to know which assortments to abandon and which to add, they could tell you; and if you would like to increase the profits of the average ticket, they can show you the way. The problem is, few customers express these feelings directly.

Instead, most do this by the measures they take when visiting your store. The challenge is studying your product sales data, and discovering insight from them. Only then can you make well informed improvements that will accommodate your customers and keep you from ever having to have an out of business sale.

In this posting, we'll offer a number of ideas for discovering your shoppers' personal preferences and motivations; by knowing what to search for, you will have the ability to form your shop - and by extension, the encounter customers have while browsing it - for a healthier bottom line.

What Is It Your Customers Come For?

People visit retail stores for various good reasons. For example, a youthful family that visits a food market may purchase every little thing they need to last a whole week. By contrast, a solitary guy in his early twenties might go to the food market to purchase food items for that night's dinner. These consumers have different motivations.

The modest merchant who can determine what products drive individuals to her store tends to make adjustments which raise the sizes of their purchases.

Using our food market illustration, she may position items young households generally buy closer to each other. Closeness plays a crucial role in influencing purchase decisions.

Exactly What Are Your Customers Saying?

It is tempting for small merchants to look for insight in the manner other stores are developed and operated. For many, this includes going to the shops of various other self-sufficient merchants or even going to their big-box competitors. To make sure, you can find information to be acquired by doing this. But usually, these insights are sought while sacrificing those offered by a merchant's own clients by way of their purchase decisions.

The products your clients purchase expose a lot with regards to their choices. So too do the products they look for, but are unable to locate, on your racks; by researching your sales data, you can discover the former. You can learn the latter by encouraging your staff to ask customers whether or not they were able to find every little thing they needed. Both types of information and facts will assist you to modify your stock to accommodate your best clients.

Pricing Items To Get The Best Profits

Pricing strategy can be complex. There are several different ways to price goods, such as doing so depending on markup, vendor arrangements, prices charged by the competitors, and other methods; an even thornier concern is controlling your pricing approach so it dovetails with your shopper-related data.

Thus far, we've talked about the importance of identifying the goods clients buy and to a small extent, their motives for purchasing them; this information is beneficial considering that it permits you to far better determine the items for which shopper need is elastic. That is, a small shift in their prices generates a (relatively) big change in the demand for them.

How may a small merchant apply this information? By figuring out which products in her retail store should be reduced to improve sales volume level, and which products shouldn't. This will help her to avoid needlessly sacrificing her margins and profit.

The Value Of Meeting Your Customers' Needs

In conclusion, studying your customers' purchase choices may yield beneficial insight that may direct your assortment choices and pricing strategy. They ought to also inform the design of your floor layout.

As we have observed, having the proper products at the right prices, and placing them where customers are likely to pick them up, will increase your average ticket size. Furthermore, it will do so while meeting the needs of your clients. And that is the very best retail strategy for winning their customer loyalty over the long haul.




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